NDA will get anywhere between 290 and 305 seats: Amit Shah

BJP on Tuesday said the party will welcome the support of anyone in national interest, even as most exit polls and its own predictions give a majority to NDA led by it.

BJP leader Amit Shah claimed NDA would get anywhere between 290 and 305 seats, including 50 to 55 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh where he was incharge of the party affairs. “We fought for 272+ seats and we are getting them. Any party who has even a single MP and wants to support us, we will welcome it in national interest,” he told reporters.

Asked if BJP has established contacts with prospective new allies, Shah declined to answer it. Narendra Modi had in recent interviews also said BJP is open to the support of allies even though it will get a majority of its own.

Asked about the future role of senior BJP leaders like L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, Shah said the party’s Parliamentary Board, the supreme decision-making body, would take a call on it.

To a question on his own future role if the party comes to power, he said “I will abide by the party decision.” He claimed the whole election was in favour of BJP and gave credit to Modi and the party cadres.

“It will be BJP’s and Narendra Modi’s victory,” he said. Asked about BJP’s strategy in improving its tally of seats in UP, he said the state was divided in 30 blocks, with each block having a few seats and a different strategy was adopted for each of them.

Modi’s close aide, who was sent specially by the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate to work in Uttar Pradesh, said he had to work a lot to tone up the party’s organisational structure and hoped the party would emerge victorious in 50 to 55 seats. He hoped BJP would make major gains in western and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP leader claimed Bahujan Samaj Party, which has been decimated by many exit polls, will emerge as the second player in the current Lok Sabha polls.

As exit polls projected regional parties in power in some states to face a drubbing in Lok Sabha elections, Shah said these parties will lose their authority to rule once the mandate goes against them.

“When they do not get a mandate from the people, they lose the moral authority to rule,” he said, in an apparent reference to Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.

On Punjab, where ruling Shiromani Akali Dal in alliance with BJP is facing anti-incumbency, the BJP leader said the earlier exit polls about the state have been proved wrong and hoped the same this time too.

Asked about the support received by BJP from RSS volunteers in this Lok Sabha elections, Shah said “not just Sangh, a number of nationalist organisations openly supported BJP and the party will largely benefit from that.”